August 3, 2020

"Trump gives Microsoft 45 days to clinch TikTok deal."

Reuters reports.
Trump said on Friday he was planning to ban TikTok amid concerns that its Chinese ownership represents a national security risk because of the personal data it handles.... The proposed acquisition of TikTok, which boasts 100 millions U.S. users, would offer Microsoft a rare opportunity to become a major competitor to social media giants such as Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Snap Inc (SNAP.N). Microsoft also owns professional social media network LinkedIn. Trump had dismissed the idea of a sale to Microsoft on Friday. But following a discussion between Trump and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the Redwood, Washington-based company said in a statement on Sunday that it would continue negotiations to acquire TikTok from ByteDance, and that it aimed to reach a deal by Sept. 15....

18 comments:

Nonapod said...

MS should be required to go over the entire codebase with a fine toothed comb with an eye to potential back doors. Maybe just start from scratch, reverse engineer the whole thing. I mean, the code itslef doesn't seem like it shoud be anything that complicated.

TWWren said...

"The proposed acquisition of TikTok, which boasts 100 million U.S. users..."

So one out of three persons in the US is a TikTok user? Really? I don't believe it.

Wince said...

"Trump gives Microsoft 45 days to clinch TikTok deal."

"Ticktock, ticktock, ticktock."

Anonymous said...

the Redwood, Washington-based company

The Redwoods are in CA. Redmond is East of Seattle.

That's what makes news services better. Their professional reporters, fact checkers and editors.



stlcdr said...

I remember DJI drones uploading video footage to Chinese servers...

Browndog said...

Knew it.

Jared: Hey, if you ban the communist spy app all the young cool kids that don't vote won't vote for you-

I know 45%of them think it's OK to fire people from their jobs just for being a Trump supporter, but 55% think it's OK for Trump supporters to have jobs!

Trump: Great point. I'll just pretend I never said I was going to ban the communist spy app tomorrow.

CJinPA said...

The 20th Century Republican Me would tut-tut the Tik Tok play by Trump. The new, 21st Century Me has shed such libertarian niceties.

Trump does things. Republicans aren't used to a GOP President who does things.

Krumhorn said...

Trump knows what it takes to get a deal done. He's played this well. Good for him!

- Krumhorn

n.n said...

If anything, Zoom, carrying sensitive information, has a progressive risk profile.

Freder Frederson said...

Has anyone (I know Trump hasn't) considered exactly how a ban on Tik Tok would be achieved? The whole idea is ridiculous unless you are going to implement a firewall (kind of like they have in China, and we rightfully condemn for).

It's a lot more complicated than banning hardware.

steve uhr said...

The art of the deal. Say you will shut down a business if they don’t sell. Talk about negotiation leverage. Maybe in return gates promises to go easy on trump’s response to Covid.

JaimeRoberto said...

I thought Apple's review process was supposed to prevent insecure apps from appearing on their App Store. If TikTok is so bad either their review process is horrible or they are letting a lot of other apps suck up huge amounts of data on us. Neither possibility is very comforting.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

This is a huge gift from Trump to Microsoft.

"You can sell to us and get something, or not sell and get nothing. Here's our 'reasonable' offer."

Static Ping said...

My favorite part about this is David Hogg - our gun control friend - condemned Trump for threatening to ban TikTok, despite the fact that back in March he wanted to get rid of TikTok for the very same reasons Trump does. When challenged on this, his response can be summarized as "Trump is right but Orange Man Bad."

Trump has broken a lot of people.

For the record, it does seem that this was an effort to force the owners to sell to Microsoft. It's certainly not an unprecedented move, but I suspect in the past this happened behind closed doors. Trump does not do subtle.

Sprezzatura said...

https://vm.tiktok.com/JjLc6XJ/

Sprezzatura said...

Our president is a fucking moron.

Sprezzatura said...

BTW, they say Redwood WA is nice this time of year.

jake said...

From Chinese spying to American spying. An improvement?